Rick Hightower

What This Series Is About This article is Part 3 of an interactive series that discusses the many languages that compile and/or run on the Java platform. Java Developer's Journal invites you to vote for your favorite non-Java programming language in the JDJ forum. Your vote will decide which languages will be covered by the series, and in what order. A lot of languages work in the JVM, but this series will cover only the most popular, as determined by your votes. To vote: Go to the top of the JDJ Web page and click the forum graphic. Click the "Enter the JDJ Developer's Forum" link. Go to the Java (Writer's Forum) section. Click on the link that says "Vote for your Favorite Language that runs in the JVM." This column is the resting place for non-Java-language, JVM-related topics for JDJ. It focuses on topics such as: Creating JavaServer Pages (JSP) in JavaScript, We... (more)

GWT: The Most Important Announcement at JavaOne?

Time is a brutal enemy of youth and exuberance. Time makes cynics of us all. Time is the universal truth serum that reveals all authenticity. Time will tell, but the announcement at JavaOne 2006 by Google may change the face of AJAX development; strike that, Google's announcement may change Web development forevermore. This cynic heard an announcement at JavaOne that changed his viewpoint and beliefs on the future of Web development. Certainly, in the recent past, the chances of doing an entire application in AJAX seemed remote for the vast sea of developers. The thought of writi... (more)

BeanShell & DynamicJava: Java Scripting with Java

The past three articles in this series have highlighted the strengths of scripting languages. They're interactive and dynamic, and allow you to experiment, debug and prototype solutions quickly. However, the most common response when I speak to die-hard Java fanatics is, "Yeah, but I'll have to learn another language and I already know Java" (I consider myself a die-hard Java fanatic to a degree). To be honest, this is a barrier that most won't cross. But what if you could have the best of both worlds? What if you could have your cake and eat it too? Well, in a sense you can. Y... (more)

Interesting Times in the Java Enterprise

Robert F. Kennedy once said, "There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May he live in interesting times.'" The enterprise Java space is "interesting." Not too long ago, folks like Bruce Tate, Gavin King, and Rod Johnson were pushing lightweight frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate, and there is still a lot of true innovation going on with AspectJ, Spring, Hibernate, WebWork, JBoss (method invocation handlers), and more. This lightweight POJO revolution shook the enterprise Java world. Having endured building applications with EJB 2.x and Struts, using Spring and Hibernate was lik... (more)

Python Programming in the JVM

What This Series Is About This article is Part 2 of a series that discusses the many languages that compile and/or run on the Java platform. This is an interactive series. Java Developer's Journal invites you to vote for your favorite non-Java programming language in the JDJ Forum. Your vote will decide which languages will be covered by the series, and in what order. The last time I checked, JPython and NetRexx were neck and neck. NetRexx, though not mentioned previously, will be covered in the next article. There are some great languages that I didn't mention last month, but as ... (more)